We have never been interested in political party activism--even whilst finding politics an entertaining sport. We loathe and detest the incipient statism of almost all modern political parties. The idea that the State is the saviour of mankind is a falsehood which has brought ruination and devastation to countless peoples and nations throughout time. Our political confession of faith is pretty simple: Jesus is Lord, and no putative statist religion or its devotees will ever conquer Him, regardless of how many high priests and acolytes it may put forward.
In the long arc of human history, statists and their political parties--even those which falsely profess Christianity--are doomed to antipathic ridicule as evil nullities.
By the "long arc of human history" we have in mind the actual historical fulfilment of the Great Commission by our Lord whereby all the peoples and nations of the earth will become dedicated followers of Him, acknowledging Him gladly as their Lord and Saviour. When eighty percent of a population profess Christ from the depths of their hearts, politicians with statist pretensions will be execrable in voters' eyes.
Meanwhile, our Lord graciously restrains the boundless ambitions of our statist politicians and their political parties. They are thwarted from doing their worst. In fact, the all-controlling governance of our Lord ensures they end up hoist on the own petards. The New Zealand Labour Party is an example of how Unbelief so often succeeds to failure, followed by political impotence. Over at Kiwiblog, a guest and former active Labour Party member, now resigned from the party, documents how the Party has gorged cannibal-like upon itself and is now a skeletal adumbration of its former ignominious glory.
We have selected several paragraphs as dainty morsels from this particular anthropophagic banquet.
. . . . Clark’s scorched earth policy to purge the party of Rogernomics and ensure there were no upstarts to her throne has left the party with a caucus deprived of serious talent and not representative of middle NZ and its values. The same is true for the wider party because the middle class, centrist moderate party members have also voted with their feet. This once proud party that was home to so many across the spectrum is now dominated by trade union hacks, rainbow activists, academics, government sector employees, feminists and PC metrosexual men. These groups make up maybe 15 to 20% of New Zealand’s population and have a political orientation much further to the left than mainstream New Zealand. . . .
But Goff knew that the Clark’s purges had burnt off much of the centrist membership of the party and that Clark’s supporters still held all the levers of power in the party and that unless he pandered to the base, his days as leader would be numbered. So began Labour’s journey away from the vote rich centre – driven by the need to placate a harder left base because the pogrom Clark set in motion 20 years before left the party absent its former moderating influences. . . .
Whilst Shearer and the ABCs managed to beat down Cunliffe’s putative coup, they could not stop the harder left and more radicalized party membership from amending the Constitution to give the membership and the unions a say in electing the leader. Despite Cunliffe’s unpopularity in his own caucus, he is a hero to the party membership and left wing enough for the unions. Labour handed power to determine its leader to its membership that, over the last 20 years, increasingly represents a narrower left wing slice of the NZ electorate. . . .
Labour was once a great party. It attracted people of energy, passion and ability from many walks of life. It had reforming zeal usually tempered by the realism of its once broader membership base and if it went too far, the voters returned the Treasury benches to the safer hands of National. Labour’s 1984 to 87 Cabinet, despite their leftist roots, embarked on a series of dramatic reforms that have transformed NZ into the more vibrant and dynamic economy it is today. The left of the party waged a war so total and absolute to purge the party of that instinct that it has destroyed modern Labour and left it a shrunken left leaning shell of its former self that struggles to attract electable talent, will not rejuvenate its caucus, offers policies that excite only 25% of the country and fights with the Greens (who are seen as more pure and virginal) for the centre left vote. The harder left base are tone deaf to the electoral realities of New Zealand politics believing that they will win the day if the great unwashed knew what was good for them and if the policies of the left were articulated better. Without a major change of direction, Labour’s prescription is a recipe for long term electoral oblivion!
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